Q&A with Readings Prize Australian Fiction shortlisted authors
With the upcoming announcement of this year’s winner, our New Australian Fiction Prize shortlist authors talk about their inspiration, their creative process, the ideal soundtrack for reading their books and what they hope readers take away.
Want to know more about each shortlisted title? Explore the shortlist here.
What was the initial inspiration for this story?
Robert Lukins (Loveland): I was camping on the side of a mountain in Tasmania and one morning I walked to the peak as the sunrise was happening somewhere behind the fog. I was standing there alone and freezing when a picture arrived in my mind, of two women standing in the shallows of a lake while around them everything burned. It’s the only time I’ve had that kind of instant spark for a story and I have no idea where it come from, but the writing of Loveland was an attempt to write a story around that image – all the things that lead to and away from those two women in the lake.
Diana Reid (Love & Virtue): Love & Virtue is an Australian campus novel about two brilliant women in their first year at university. I wrote it the year after I graduated, so although it's not autobiographical (the characters and events are all made up) it was inspired by my own observations and reflections on my time at uni. It was also based on the campus novels I loved to read, from Brideshead Revisited to The Secret History, to more recent novels like Normal People or The Idiot. I was reading these books for pleasure while I was at university and thinking, where is the Australian version?
George Haddad (Losing Face): It's hard to pinpoint because so much of the story is woven into the fabric of my life, but the characters and place came to me while eating a manoush on a bench in Western Sydney and watching a scrum of young men do their thing outside a cafe.
What was the creative process?
George Haddad: The novel was a major component of my doctoral research around masculinities, shame, and suburbia, so the creative writing process was quite research-led. That all happened over three and a half years and covid lockdowns. In a way it was great because it meant the desk was the only place I had to be, but it was also much like a fever dream. I finished the novel before the exegesis which felt cathartic and natural.
Rhett Davis (Hovering): Hovering took me about three years to write. I enrolled in a creative writing PhD with an idea for a novel about a transforming city and a woman with a secret. I wrote the first two chapters a few times before I moved on. They were grounding chapters, chapters readers could get settled in to before being thrown something unexpected. I remember doing some writing exercises — one in simultaneous narrative in the form of a table and the other a perspective from George’s phone — to try to understand the characters a little more. I liked the results so much I kept them in. Occasionally, if I wasn’t sure where the main story was headed, I’d write about a radio show that was going on in the background, a random social media exchange, a series of videos, or an advertisement. I called them ‘interruptions’ partly because they were interrupting the story I was supposed to be writing. But they ended up being more important to the book than I realised.
Diana Reid: It was all very unplanned! I'd always thought it would be nice to write a novel in a vague bucket-list, something-to-do-before-I-die way. I didn't write any fiction at university, but I was involved in student theatre, and had plans to do some work in independent theatre when I graduated. That was 2020, so those plans were all cancelled by Covid, whereupon I found myself at home with nothing to do. I wrote Love & Virtue in five months in the first lockdown, and then wrote the bulk of Seeing Other People in the long lockdown last year. Whether I can write when there's not a plague on remains to be seen!!
What would be the perfect soundtrack to listen to while reading your book?
Rhett Davis: Confession time: I’m the sort of person who compiles playlists for my characters, the setting, and scenes. I often prefer it to writing. This means it’s a little hard for me to choose one album. But whenever I wanted to get into the mood for writing the weirder moments in the city I’d listen to Boards of Canada’s Music Has the Right to Children, with its strange loops, whirls, ghostlike voices, and Canadian public broadcasting. It’s not too insistent so it’d suit a reading perfectly — particularly those moments when things are looking a little warped.
Isobel Beech (Sunbathing): I’m at risk of thinking too hard about this so I’m just going to say, 'Peace Piece' by Bill Evans, 'Stars' by The Clean, and 'Dust' by A.G. Cook, in that order.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
Robert Lukins: The writing of this book was unlike any other experience I’ve had while writing. I felt truly like I was standing next to, or even within, these characters and I hope even a little of that sense of closeness, of visceral empathy, is able to be experienced by readers. I hope they will find a world where the that wall between reality and the imagination can be permeable.
George Haddad: That people are flawed, that we are sponges, that we live on top of each other and yet we are strangers.
Isobel Beech: A sense of comfort. Writing Sunbathing comforted me in a very weird and lonely time, so if it can be a friend to anybody going through a hard time then I’m content. Also; go easy on yourself, recover slowly, and try to tell people how you feel.
